/ Green River Killer

Ridgway pleads guilty to Green River murders

11:08 AM PST on Friday, November 7, 2003

From KING5.com Staff and Wire Reports

SEATTLE - Gary Ridgway, the former truck painter suspected of being the Green River Killer, went into Seattle court Wednesday morning and pleaded guilty to 48 murders in King County, Wash., in what is believed to be the nation's worst serial killings case.

Ridgway, showing no emotion or remorse in court, admitted to the murders, saying in a statement, "I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight."

Ridgway’s admission was part of a plea bargain, which spares him from the death penalty in King County. The 54-year-old truck painter from Auburn, a suburb 28 miles southeast of Seattle, would spend the rest of his life in prison.

KING Gary Ridgway faces a judge and pleads guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder.

Prosecuting attorneys said a 16-page plea bargain agreement had been presented to Gary Ridgway’s defense attorneys June 13, 2003. Ridgway acknowledge he had discussed the plea bargain agreement thoroughly with his attorneys and understood the terms of the plea bargain, which includes life imprisonment without possibility of parole and waived rights to a juried trial.

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KING 5's Linda Byron reports Reading of Ridgway statement Ridgway enters guilty pleas King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng King County Sheriff Dave Reichert A defense attorney's perspective

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Court documents Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader

Prosecutor's summary of evidence The plea agreement Ridgway's statement Second amended information

The Green River Killer is blamed for the deaths of 49 women, mostly prostitutes and runaways who disappeared from the Sea-Tac Strip south of Seattle in the early 1980’s. The first bodies showed up in the Green River.

Many relatives of the victims were present during the court proceedings. Some listened and wept quietly in the courtroom as prosecuting attorney Jeff Baird read Ridgway's statement, which gave grisely details of the long list of murders.

"In most cases when I murdered these women I did not know their names," Ridgway's statement read. "Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good memory for their faces."

Ridgway also admitted to dumping victims bodies in clusters, sometimes dumping them as far as Oregon to throw authorities off his trail.

"I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could... I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught," Ridgway's statement read. He went on to say that he hated prostitutes and did not want to pay them for sex.

As the 90-minute court hearing ended, family members were left to process the closure of saga that has lasted for more than 20 years.

“It just felt so unreal that they finally found the guy after all these years,” said Searaun Ford, brother of victim Pammy Avent. “Here this man confessed and said, ‘Yes, I killed Pammy Avent.’”

Some said the experience of seeing Ridgway and hearing his confession will help them move on.

“I think we can let go of it now and it will be okay. In a little while, it will be okay,” said Kathy Mills, mother of victim Opal Mills.

For others, the admission brought more tears and anguish.

“If it was my choice, I’d rather for him to die today,” said Deborah York, aunt of victim Cynthia York. “He don’t deserve to live another day.”

Other details were likely to be revealed. Sources told The Associated Press that documents will show that when Ridgway was 17 - more than a decade before he strangled his first Green River serial killings victim — he stabbed and seriously wounded a little boy. And among other gruesome details, sources said, is that Ridgway had sex with his dead victims.

Ridgway was arrested two years ago after investigators linked him to the deaths with DNA evidence. He was charged with seven of the deaths and pleaded innocent.

But sources said the prospect of the death penalty led Ridgway to trade information for his life. Since he reportedly began cooperating, searchers have found four sets of human remains and identified three of them.

‘Green River nightmare is over’

During a press conference following the hearing, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said he agreed to drop the possibility of a death penalty against Gary Ridgway to bring the Green River Killer case to a close.

Without the plea agreement, Maleng said, he would have been able to prosecute only seven cases.

KING With his attorneys at his side, Gary Ridgway pleads guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder.

Under the agreement, Ridgway helped investigators find four sets of remains over the summer and he pleaded guilty Wednesday to 48 murders.

“The Green River nightmare is over,” said Maleng.

Maleng said Ridgway does not deserve to live but the goal is to seek justice not to win cases. The plea bargain helps more victim families and resolves doubts about murders for which there was no evidence against Ridgway.

Maleng added he thinks other prosecutors in Washington will still be able to seek the death penalty, based on the facts of each case.

Although the Green River killings have been solved with the guilty pleas from Ridgway, King County sheriff Dave Reichert said there’s no joy or celebration among investigators.

Reichert agreed with the decision of Maleng to make a plea bargain — information and guilty pleas in return for dropping the death penalty.

Reichert was one of the first investigators on the case two decades ago as a young detective. Reichert and Maleng spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday meeting with victims’ relatives to tell them the deaths had been solved.

Reichert also said the investigation continues and there is still a chance that other Green River charges may be filed.

The courts will decide Ridgway's sentencing date on November 19. Part of Ridgway's plea bargain requires him to help investigators until his sentencing.

Green River killings most prolific on record

The remains of scores of women, mainly runaways and prostitutes, turned up near ravines, rivers, airports and freeways in the 1980s. Of them, investigators officially listed 49 women as probable victims of the Green River Killer.

Gary Ridgway, center, helps members of the Green River Task Force search for evidence.

Ridgway had been a suspect ever since 1984, when Marie Malvar's boyfriend reported that he last saw her getting into a pickup truck identified as Ridgway's.

But Ridgway told police he didn't know Malvar, and a police investigator in Des Moines, midway between Seattle and Tacoma, who knew him cleared him as a suspect. Later that year, Ridgway contacted the King County Sheriff's Green River task force -- ostensibly to offer information about the case -- and passed a polygraph test.

Detectives continued to suspect him, however, and in 1987 they searched his house and took a saliva sample. It was 13 years before DNA technology caught up to their suspicions and they could link that sample to DNA taken from the bodies of three of the earliest victims.

Ridgway was arrested as he left work Nov. 30, 2001, and later pleaded innocent to seven killings. But facing DNA evidence and the prospect of the death penalty, he began cooperating and trading information for his life.

He confessed to 42 of the 49 listed killings, as well as six not on the list, the sources had said. He directed authorities to four sets of previously undiscovered remains.

It turned out that the killings continued long after detectives thought the Green River Killer had stopped, the sources said. The last victim on the official list disappeared in 1984, but one of the cases Ridgway is expected to plead to involves a woman killed in 1990, and another involves a woman killed in 1998.

That has stunned some criminologists.

"Once they're identified as a suspect, they usually stop," said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston. "Ridgway is really a rare specimen, even among his peers, in being able to avoid apprehension for such a long time."

It's difficult to know who the most prolific serial killers are because many don't confess. Prosecutors often charge suspects only with the cases they're certain they can prove. And some of those who do confess may take credit for crimes they didn't commit, in hopes of appearing more deadly than they actually were.

John Wayne Gacy, who preyed on men and boys in Chicago in the 1970s, was convicted of killing 33. Ted Bundy, whose killing started in Washington state, confessed to killing more than 30 women and girls, but was convicted only of killing three before he was executed.

Relatives of the Green River Killer's victims have had mixed responses to the idea of a plea deal. Some accused King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng of reneging on a promise he made when Ridgway was first charged that he would not bargain with the death penalty.

Maleng and other King County officials have declined to comment on the plea deal.

KING Gary Ridgway follows along as prosecuting attorney Jeff Baird reads Ridgway's statement to the court.

Maria Marrero, whose sister Becky disappeared in 1982, told a local television station no plea deal would please her. She wants Ridgway put to death.

"That's the most devastating thing -- that I will probably never have that privilege, to bury my sister," she said.

But other victims' relatives have said that learning what happened to their loved ones is worth giving up the death penalty.

"Life as he knows it is pretty much done and over with," said Tim Meehan, whose pregnant, 18-year-old sister was found dead in 1983. "The other families at least now have the opportunity to have answers. If you can exchange that information for life in prison, well, to me it's well worth the information."

KING5.com's Liza Javier and Susan Wyatt, KING5's Deborah Feldman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.